BLACK TANGLED HEART (Play On #3) by SAMANTHA YOUNG

‘I didn’t understand what pulled us together. I didn’t know what made Jane Doe the only woman who satisfied my heart, body, and soul. I didn’t need to know. I just had to do what I could to not lose her.’

Black Tangled Heart has catapulted itself to the top of our list as one of our favourite Samantha Young books!  What a story! We devoured every word in a book we found impossible to put down. Black Tangled Heart is first and foremost a standalone story of true and intense soulmate love, yet Samantha Young somehow wrapped it in a cloak of forbidden love, passion, suspense, deceit, revenge and utter heartbreak. But, towering above it all is a beautifully potent and epic romance we followed, hearts fully invested, from young love to tortured and painful adulthood.

‘A love that consumes, consumes everything into utter desolation.’

They say the path to true love never runs smoothly and for Jane Doe and Jamie McKenna, no truer words were spoken. Their love story took us from the tender years of 13 and 15 respectively, through to the present in a rollercoaster of emotions. Theirs was a love story that wasn’t without its hurdles and pitfalls, and later, it would be shrouded in a darkness that would consume them both.

“Loving you will be nowhere near as easy as it will be for me to love you. You get that, right?”

When Jamie McKenna and his younger sister Lorna, leave Boston to live with their big sister Skye, who is forging a successful career in California, they didn’t realise they would soon welcome another into their fold when Lorna befriends their neighbour, the lonely Jane Doe. A young girl who is fostered by a couple who live in the same apartment block, Jane struggles with her identity, doesn’t really fit in and feels unloved. That is until the McKenna’s offer her solace, the family she has desired for so long.

Jane revels in the friendship with the difficult Lorna but it isn’t until Jamie and Jane fall for one another some years later, that Lorna shows her true colours – her possessive and manipulative ways would cause the young couple and the family so much pain, but it was the direction Samantha Young eventually steered us that broke our hearts and took us completely by surprise. At that point, we had no idea where this story leading us, and we couldn’t have anticipated the emotional outpouring we would experience.

‘My soul was connected to hers. I doubted I could ever find true peace without Jane by my side.’

There is so much to Black Tangled Heart, and far be it for us to unravel any of the plots and ruin the experience for you.  You really do need to go into this one blind. What we can say is that, as readers, we felt Samantha Young dug really deep to tell this story. The emotion and heartbreak bled from the pages, the sweet essence of young love was captured so exquisitely, the pain and poignancy the story took was topical and sensitively handled by an author who delivered a raw potency to Jamie and Jane’s love story. Black Tangled Heart is a story of family, love, hopes, dreams, revenge and loss, and the prose from this author was top class.

“One day,” she whispered, “we’re going to have that future we always talked about.”

Samantha Young delivered a beautifully crafted story that swung from sweet to torturous and everything in between. There was a darkness to this story we relished, and as much there were times she wrecked our hearts, we loved the enthralling journey this author led us on.

We challenge you not to take these characters and their stories into your hearts as you swoon, cry and feel every word in this painfully beautiful love story. As we closed the last page we reflected on a story that will stay with us for a long, long time to come. What a tremendous 5 star read!